If you want to lose weight, have you considered eating Mediterranean with healthy fat? A lot has changed in recent years regarding recommendations for healthy food intake. In the eighties and nineties the low fat diet was recommended, which unfortunately was high in carbs and led to obesity. What we have learnt from this is that carbohydrates that get broken down in the gut into sugar are converted into fatty acids and stored as fat.

Studies regarding diets with unhealthy and healthy fats

Here is a prospective study that followed 120,877 U.S. women and men over a longer time. Every 4 years it was noted that for potato chips 1.69 lbs. were gained, for potatoes 1.28 lbs., for sugar-sweetened beverages 1.00 lb., for unprocessed red meats 0.95 lb. and for processed meats 0.93 lb. On the other hand from vegetables there was a weight loss of −0.22 lb., for whole grains −0.37 lb., for fruits −0.49 lb., for nuts −0.57 lb. and for yogurt −0.82 lb. Cheese was also investigated and was found to be mostly neutral in terms of weight gain, while butter did cause weight gain.

In a study from Spain that was published in the Lancet in June 2016. 7447 asymptomatic men (aged 55–80 years) and women (aged 60–80 years) were followed for about 5 years. They all had type 2 diabetes and three or more cardiovascular risk factors. They were randomly assigned to three Mediterranean diet types: a Mediterranean diet with olive oil, a Mediterranean diet with nuts and a control group on a low fat Mediterranean diet. The interesting finding after 5 years was that both the patients on the Mediterranean diet with nuts and with olive oil lost some waist circumference. Their weight loss was 0.95 lbs. for the olive oil group and 2.82 oz. in the Mediterranean diet group with nuts. The Mediterranean diet group with olive oil had lost 0.22 inches in the waistline, the other group on nuts lost 0.38 inches. These are hardly impressive losses! The researchers concluded that fat restriction is not necessary on the Mediterranean diet, as there was no weight gain with unrestricted healthy fats after 5 years.

Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and epidemiologist of the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy wrote an editorial regarding this Spanish study: ”A handful of nuts may be 160 calories, which is more calories than a can of Coke, but that doesn’t mean the can of Coke is a better choice”. He added: “Salt, sugar, starch, processed food and trans fats should be off the menu, not fat. Healthy foods are healthy foods, and bad foods are bad. It doesn’t matter, if the food is low fat or high fat. This is a separate issue.”

Mediterranean With Healthy Fat

Conclusion

When wanting to lose weight, the key is to pay attention to your carb intake. Make sure it consists of unrefined carbs. You will do this if you eat vegetables and fruit. Cut out sugar and starchy foods as much as you can. Have lean, clean meats, but avoid red meat except perhaps for every two weeks some grass fed beef. Eat fish (important for its content of omega-3 fatty acids), also enjoy yogurt, nuts, olive oil and avocados. It is an extra benefit if you add regular exercise to this as well. You will notice that you gradually shed the unnecessary pounds. This is not a program for just a month or two. To stay well, make it a new lifestyle!

Powerful catechins that are a special form of bioflavonoids provide the healing powers of green tea. Research teams have proven that these catechins are only contained in green tea, not so much in black tea. The most effective of several catechins contained in green tea is EGCG, which stands for EpiGalloCatechin-3-Gallate. It crosses the blood/brain barrier and is very important for the protection of the brain from Alzheimer’s disease. But green tea or green tea extract has a diversified pharmacological action. It is said to protect you from cardiovascular disease, from obesity, from diabetes, from autoimmune disorders, from cancer and from Alzheimer’s and dementia.

In the following I like to comment on how green tea or its extract can protect from all of these diseases.

Alzheimer’s disease

Although there are 5 or 6 approved anti-Alzheimer’s drugs, none of them work for very long. They may at best postpone the deteriorating memory for 6 months, but then the effect of the drug wears off. The reason is that the drugs do not stop the production of the deadly beta-amyloid. It is the beta-amyloid that damages nerve cells that you want to preserve so you can think and memorize. In contrast a simple phytochemical, the catechin EGCG has been shown in animal experiments and in human trials to stop beta-amyloid production and increase solubility of beta-amyloid fragments in the brain. The end result is better memory and no further deterioration.

In a study of 13,988 elderly Japanese observed over 3 years the group that consumed 3 to 4 cups of green tea daily had 33% less strokes, cognitive impairment and osteoporosis.

Researchers at the University of Basel, Switzerland enrolled 12 healthy volunteers aged 21 to 28 and fed them extracts of green tea or placebo fluid via feeding tubes. This was done to rule out taste as a factor. Functional MRI scans were applied as the subjects were given memory-stimulating tasks. Only the green tea extract was boosting activity in the frontal brain of the subjects. This was located in a specific area, called dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This area is known to be involved with language comprehension, reasoning and learning. It also switches short-term memory into long-term memory, called working memory processing.

Studies in animals have shown that nerve cells are protected from the toxic effect of beta-amyloid and at the same time the production of new brain nerve cells (neurons) is triggered by green tea extract. This is really good news for Alzheimer’s disease patients and their families: green tea extract delays further memory deterioration and stimulates the development of new nerve cells in the brain!

Cardiovascular disease

In a 2006 Japanese study 40,530 Japanese adults aged 40 to 79 years without history of stroke, coronary heart disease, or cancer at baseline were observed for 7 years. Diaries were kept about how many cups of green tea each person was drinking per day. The biggest effect was seen with regard to prevention of heart attacks and strokes.

Men had a mortality reduction of 12% for heart attacks when they drank 5 cups or more of green tea; in women the corresponding mortality reduction for heart attack was 31%, a bigger effect. Overall mortality from strokes was lower than from heart attacks making the effect of green tea consumption even more beneficial with respect to stroke prevention. In this study no cancer preventing effect was observed for green tea.

Obesity

It appears that green tea increases heat production and burns fat in the process. There was a small effect in terms of weight loss and a beneficial effect increasing the protective HDL cholesterol in this 2012 Polish study on obese patients. The authors compared either 379 mg of green tea extract, or a placebo, daily for 3 months. They concluded: “The results of this study confirm the beneficial effects of green tea extract supplementation on body mass index, lipid profile, and total antioxidant status in patients with obesity.”

Diabetes

Although there are claims in some studies that green tea would prevent diabetes, this question was thoroughly investigated in this Chinese 2014 study.

No effects were noted on fasting blood sugars or on hemoglobin A1C values, a very sensitive indicator for the presence or absence of diabetes. All these lab tests were unchanged following consumption of green tea or green tea extract. Forget using green tea for diabetes prevention; cut out sugar and starchy foods instead.

In an animal model arthritis researchers determined that T helper cells are weakened and bone resorption is inhibited by EGCG from green tea extract.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA have noted that green tea extract is useful in calming down the immune response in autoimmune diseases. They concluded: “Altogether, these studies identify and support the use of EGCG as a potential therapeutic agent in preventing and ameliorating T cell-mediated autoimmune diseases.”

Cancer

Many research papers have found that EGCG from green tea extract has immune modulatory effects that are useful in combination with chemotherapy. A combination of cisplatin therapy with green tea extract has been found to have more effects on colorectal cancer and ovarian cancer than each one on its own. Similarly chemotherapy of breast cancer had better results in humans when EGCG from green tea extract was added as an immune modulation. More research, particularly in humans is needed to fully understand the mechanism of action of EGCG.

Toxicity of green tea extract

Animal experiments showed that higher doses of green tea extract could cause toxicity in the liver and in the nose of rats and mice. I was not able to find objective evidence for green tea toxicity in the PubMed system with respect to humans.

Healing Powers Of Green Tea

Conclusion

Perhaps the most important discovery regarding green tea extract is that it crosses easily through the blood/brain barrier into the brain. This can postpone Alzheimer’s disease and can even lead to new neuron formation. The beneficial cardiovascular effects are also useful and combine well with exercise and good nutrition for prevention. Particularly stroke prevention is a useful property of EGCG from green tea extract. The effect on obesity is marginal whereas there was no effect of green tea on prevention of diabetes. The immune modulatory effect of green tea extract is useful in the treatment of autoimmune diseases and of cancer. Existing treatments for these conditions are becoming more effective by adding green tea extract.

We rarely hear that heart attacks can kill; we are more likely to hear that a person was brought to the hospital with a heart attack. The doctors placed a stent or two and the person left the hospital two or three days later, fully recovered.

What silent changes occur before a heart attack?

A heart attack does not happen out of nowhere. There can be one or several risk factors present before, like smoking, a lack of exercise, being overweight or obese from eating too much sugar, consuming sugary drinks and eating lots of starchy foods. This will have changed the cholesterol fractions with the bad LDL cholesterol being high and the good HDL cholesterol being low. Triglycerides in this setting are also usually high. The end result is that the lining of the body’s arteries, including the coronary arteries are thickened to the point where blood has a harder time flowing through the opening of the coronary arteries. One day the heart muscle reports severe pain from a lack of oxygen and nutrients. There are essentially three coronary arteries that supply oxygen and nutrients to the heart muscle. For details follow this link.

Often people have 50% to 60% of coronary artery narrowing, but do not know about this. There are tests available that a person could do to check the amount of hardening of the arteries (for instance the IMT test, see below).

What happens after stent placement?

The interventional cardiologist inserts a catheter from a wrist artery or elbow artery backwards through the aorta and from there into each of the openings of the coronary arteries. By injecting a dye X-rays can be made that show the condition of each of the coronary arteries. If a blockage is identified, this can be overcome through angioplasty, where an instrument is used to pierce through the atheromatous deposits and reopen the coronary artery. To prevent re-stenosing, the cardiologist places a wire mesh stent that opens up upon withdrawal of the instrumentation. The end result is that the previously closed off coronary artery is fully functioning again and the stent keeps the previously narrowed coronary artery open. The cardiologist may have to place two or more stents during the same procedure.

A 5-year follow-up study summarized the outcome after stent placements in 1095 patients with 3-vessel coronary artery disease. Percutaneous coronary intervention, a fancy name for saying “angioplasty combined with stent placement” had a 5-year mortality rate of 14.6%, 9.2% heart attack rates and 24.4% reoccurring blockages requiring repeat procedures to reopen the coronary arteries. There were 3% strokes over 5 years demonstrating that not only heart vessels, but also brain vessels were affected by the hardening of the arteries.

What is heart failure?

You may think that the heart would now be entirely back to normal. But this is a gross simplification. The heart functions like a pump, and we know that pumps can fail. In the past when the heart stopped functioning, the person would die. This was the case because there was a complete irreversible closure of one or more coronary arteries. As a result the muscle of one part of the heart, typically involving the left heart chamber would stop functioning. This part of the heart is supplied by the left anterior descending coronary artery. The left heart chamber is the main pump that pushes blood out into the aorta and from there through the whole body. We need the left anterior descending coronary artery to be open and supply nutrients and oxygen to this vital heart pump all the time. When there is a 70% to 80% narrowing of this artery and the heart is not yet failing, there can be life threatening irregular heartbeats, called ventricular fibrillation from a lack of oxygen. This makes the heart muscle contractions no longer effective, as they are no longer synchronized making the heart muscle beat as one unit. This causes acute pump failure and the patients dies. The other possibility is that the patient has a massive heart attack that kills a large portion of the heart muscle off (called myocardial infarction or heart attack). If the patient is not lucky to have immediate access to a hospital with an interventional cardiologist waiting for him or her, even angioplasty and stent placement will not revive the dead portion of the heart muscle and the patient will not survive.

Using a echocardiography the ejection fraction can be determined. This is a measure of how well your heart empties with each heartbeat. Normally it would be between 50 and 70. Below 50 indicates that heart failure is present.

Patients who had a mild heart attack may only have an ejection fraction of 40 and get short-winded with mild activity. Other reasons for mild heart failure can be atrial fibrillation, a common chronic condition in older patients where the atrial chamber is not contracting properly, but fibrillating. Another cause can be inadequate treatment of high blood pressure, so the heart muscle has a hard time keeping up the blood flow against an abnormally high pressure gradient.

Many patients who had a heart attack and were quickly treated with angioplasty and stent insertion have had some minor persistent damage to the heart muscle resulting in abnormal echocardiograms with lowered ejection fractions. In the past without the acute intervention they would likely not have survived. Now due to modern medical technology these patients did survive, but they are left with a mild degree of heart failure, as a certain portion of their heart muscle has died off.

What kills the patient with a heart attack?

As explained above, when the heart muscle no longer is able to function as a pump, the patient dies. This can come from irregular heartbeats, particularly ventricular fibrillation that does not respond to emergency treatment with a defibrillator. This is an electrical device that resets The reason can also be a heart attack that kills a significant part of the heart muscle. Ventricular fibrillation often occurs when not enough oxygen reaches the heart muscle and the special nerves that coordinate that heart muscle fibers to contract as one unit. Regular monitoring of the carotid intimal-medial thickness (IMT) by ultrasound will give a fairly accurate test for coronary artery hardening as the two are closely related.

A patient in danger of getting into trouble can be referred to a cardiologist and angioplasty and stent placement can prevent further deterioration for the time being. It is much safer to do these procedures electively rather than during an emergency when the patient is in distress.

Prevention of heart attacks, any volunteers?

Following the overview above it becomes apparent that prevention to not get heart disease is the best approach with regard to hardening of the arteries. This can be achieved by doing the following:

You must abandon the Standard American diet. This means no processed food, no refined sugar intake, avoid as much starchy foods as possible. Adopting a Mediterranean diet or a DASH diet is a first step. The DASH diet was developed to help patients with high blood pressure to reduce their blood pressure through the use of this diet. Reducing blood pressure will also reduce the risk of heart disease.

Avoid excessive alcohol intake (more than two drinks per day for men and more than one drink per day for women) as the toxic effect of alcohol kills heart muscle cells. This in turn leads to heart failure.

Regular physical exercise will condition your lungs and heart and improve your cardiac output. By having bigger reserves the person becomes more resilient to developing a heart attack.

Increasing your fiber intake to 30 to 35 grams per day using vegetables and fruit and additional fiber supplements. Common fiber supplements consist of psyllium husk and/or others from the health food store. Take it in the morning with breakfast and with lunch. By avoiding extra fiber at dinnertime you sleep better at night. It turns out that fiber intake is very important to lower LDL cholesterol and triglycerides by interfering with the enterohepatic pathway that leads to recirculation of bile salts rich in these fatty substances. The net results are lower LDL cholesterol and triglyceride levels and higher HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol) levels.

Take some vitamins and supplements. Vitamin B2, B6, B12 and methyl folate will support methylation pathways. Vitamin D3 in a good dose like 5000 IU per day or more and vitamin K2, 200 micrograms per day will remove calcium out of the arteries and transport it into the bones; this effectively prevents hardening of the arteries and prevents osteoporosis at the same time. Omega-3 supplements (EPA/DHA) are very useful to keep inflammation under control and delay hardening of the arteries; it helps to lower LDL and increase HDL.

Have your hormones checked. Some doctors do not feel comfortable doing this; maybe you want to see a naturopath about it instead. Your body needs the hormone receptors satisfied by adequate bioidentical hormone levels; otherwise you age prematurely and give up body functions that you would rather keep. Normal hormone levels prevent osteoporosis, premature hardening of the arteries, Alzheimer’s, erectile dysfunction and premature wrinkles. The essential hormones involved in cardiovascular disease prevention are thyroid hormones, sex hormones and in some aging people also human growth hormone.

Conclusion

I have explained that hardening of the arteries is the cause of heart attacks. This is caused by a multitude of factors including sugar and processed food overconsumption, smoking, excessive alcohol intake, obesity, undertreated high blood pressure and diabetes. Simply doing angioplasties and placing stents will not stop the process of what led to the heart attack in the first place. Almost 15% died within 5 years following those procedures and 9% got another heart attack. They did not change their diets and stayed inactive. There is another sad aspect about clogging of coronary arteries: the more coronary artery flow we lose through hardening of the coronary arteries, the lower our ejection fraction of the heart as a pump has become. When we reach the point of less than 50% of ejection fraction, we enter disability country with clinical heart failure, forcing us to wear continuous oxygen masks and being unable to exercise or walk. Heart failure is as deadly as terminal cancer having a very high mortality rate.

Concentrate on prevention now, because heart disease remains the number one killer. Remember that we can largely prevent heart disease when we follow the steps mentioned above!

This book entitled “Healing Gone Wrong – Healing Done Right” (Amazon, March 18, 2016) is dealing with the practice of medicine then and now. Medical errors, false diagnoses and wrong treatments are nothing new in the history of medicine. It happened in the past, and it is happening now. My first book dealt with anti-aging and was entitled “A Survivor’s Guide to Successful Aging” (Amazon 2014).

Book overview

Chapter 1 describes that famous people like President Kennedy, Elvis Presley, Churchill, Beethoven or more recently Michael Jackson have something in common: all of them suffered the consequences of blatant medical mistakes. In Beethoven’s time lead containing salves to plug the drainage holes from removing fluid from his abdomen caused lead poisoning. In this chapter I review also how the illnesses of the above-mentioned celebrities were treated, but then ask the question: “What could have been done better to prevent some of the disastrous treatment outcomes?”

Chapter 2 deals with how modern drugs seem to come and go. We learn that twenty-first century medications that are touted as the latest therapeutic agents are having their potentially deadly consequences too: COX-2 inhibitors, the second generation of “improved” arthritis drugs cause strokes and heart attacks! Your doctor may still prescribe some of these dangerous drugs for arthritis now.

Chapter 3 deals with the fact that medical treatments for people’s diseases may be inappropriate when the doctor treats only symptoms, but nothing is done about the causes of their illnesses. This is a scary thought.

Chapter 4 asks the question whether we could learn something from these poor health outcomes in the past, so that we will be able to prevent any disastrous outcomes pertaining to our own health care in the present and future. As we will see, the problem today is still the same as it was in the past, namely that many physicians still like to treat symptoms instead of the underlying cause of an illness. Even though Big Pharma has the seducing concept of a pill for every ill, it is not always in your best interest, when these medications have a slew of side effects. “Gastric reflux” means a mouthful of stomach acid. This is a fact the suffering patient knows already! Big Pharma simply offers the patient with the symptom of gastric reflux a multitude of medications to suppress this symptom. But it is more important to dig deeper to find the reason for the illness and treat the underlying cause.

Chapter 5 concentrates on the brain and how we can keep our brains functioning optimally until a ripe old age. This review spans from prevention of head concussions to avoiding type 3 diabetes (insulin sensitivity from overconsumption of sugar). It manifests itself in Alzheimer’s disease. It is a form of diabetes of the brain that leads to deposits of a gooey substance. Prevention of this condition is also reviewed .

Chapter 6 reviews what we now know about how to keep a healthy heart. Certain ingredients are necessary such as regular exercise, a healthy Mediterranean diet, supplements etc. The good part is that what is good for the heart is also good for the brain. You are preventing two problems (brain and heart disease) at the same time.

Chapter 7 delves into the question why healthy food intake matters. Without the right ingredients of our body fuel, the body machinery will not work properly. The Mediterranean diet is an anti-inflammatory diet that is particularly useful.

Chapter 8 talks about healthy limbs, bones and joints. We are meant to stay active in our eighties and nineties and beyond. No osteoporosis, no joint replacements, no balance problems that result in falls! Learn about how to deal with problems like these in this chapter.

Chapter 9 deals with detoxification. What do we do as we are confronted with pollution, with radiation in the environment and poisons in our daily food? A combination of organic foods, intravenous chelation treatments and taking supplements can help us in that regard.

Chapter 10 deals with reducing the impact of cancer in our lives. A lot of facts have come out in the past 10 years telling us that reduction of sugar and starchy food intake reduces cancer. Curcumin, resveratrol and vitamin D3 supplements also reduce cancer rates as does exercise and stress management. All of this is reviewed here.

Chapter 11 checks out your hormone status. Women need to avoid estrogen dominance; both sexes need to replace the hormones that are missing. By paying attention to your hormonal status and replacing the missing natural hormones with bioidentical ones, most people can add 10 to 15 years of useful, active life!

Chapter 12 is refining some of the thoughts about anti-aging. You will learn about the importance to keep your mitochondrial DNA healthy. Apart from that there are ways how to keep your telomeres longer; certain supplements that are reviewed will help. Also your lifestyle does make a big difference in how old you can turn.

Chapter 13 investigates the limits of supplements. Many supplements are useful, but you do not want to overdo it and get into toxic levels. More is not necessarily better!

Chapter 14 reviews an alternative approach to treating ADHD. Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder has been over diagnosed, has been neglected and has been over treated with dangerous drugs. An alternative treatment plan is discussed, which includes a combination of therapeutic steps.

Chapter 15 gives you a brief summary of the book.

Kirkus Review

Kirkus Reviews reviewed the book on March 17, 2016: “A retired physician details how various preventative measures can fend off disease and disability in this consumer health guide. Schilling (A Survivor’s Guide to Successful Aging, 2014) had a family medicine practice in Canada for many years before retiring. Although Schilling ventures into some controversial territory in his latest book, it’s generally an engaging, helpful synthesis of ideas that draws on reputable research from the Mayo Clinic and other sources. Overall, it serves as an intensely detailed wake-up call to the importance of preventative health. He largely brings an accessible and even-tempered tone to his narrative, warning readers, for example, that preventative health measures can only aid in “a delay of aging, not ‘eternal living.’ ” A thought-provoking, impassioned plea to be proactive about one’s health.”

Healing Gone Wrong – Healing Done Right

Conclusion

In this book it becomes evident that it is better to prevent an illness whenever possible rather than to wait for illness to set in and cause disabilities or death. You heard this before: “Prevention is better than a cure” or “an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure”. I will give an explanation, based on scientific data that there is indeed evidence to support these notions on a cellular level. The mitochondria, the energy packages within our cells, are the driving force that keep people vibrantly healthy well into their nineties. All this can only happen when the mitochondria function properly. If the mitochondria are poisoned and as a result of toxins malfunction, we are not looking at a person with vibrant health. Instead sixty or seventy year-olds may be confined to a wheelchair. If you want a life without disabilities, a life without major illnesses and enjoy good health to a ripe old age, you are reading the right book.

Dr. Pamela Smith gave a detailed talk regarding hypothyroidism at the 23rd Annual World Congress on Anti-Aging Medicine on Dec. 13, 2015 in Las Vegas. As a lack of thyroid hormones is one of the causes of premature aging, it is important to pay attention to your thyroid hormones. Here I am summarizing the highlights of this talk.

Thyroid disease, particularly low thyroid hormone levels, called hypothyroidism is very common in the population. Part of the problem is that in 72% of the world population dietary iodine is insufficient to provide adequate amounts of iodine to the body that is required for thyroid hormone production in the thyroid gland. The US Institute of Medicine has recommended 150 micrograms of iodine intake every day. Japan with its emphasis on seaweed intake is one of the few countries where thyroid deficiency is extremely low (Ref.1).

But apart from dietary factors there are many other factors that can lead to insufficient amounts of circulating thyroid hormones (see below).

The production of thyroid hormones

The thyroid gland produces the thyroid hormones by adding iodine atoms into the amino acid L-tyrosine to make thyroxin (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3). T3 is the main active hormone, which is about 5-times more powerful than T4. There is a feedback cycle between thyroid hormones, the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland. Both the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland have thyroid hormone receptors that sense the level of T3 and T4 and can modify the production of these hormones. The majority of T3, which is the main active thyroid hormone, is produced by conversion of T4 into T3 by a selenium-dependent enzyme.

Most of the thyroid hormones are bound in the blood by thyroid binding globulin. Only the free T3 and free T4 are metabolically active and will affect the metabolism of our body cells. The delicate balance can be easily disrupted. Oral contraceptives and sex hormone replacement therapy can increase the amount of circulating thyroid binding globulin, thus creating a thyroid hormone deficiency state, as the free T3 and free T4 are diminished.

Other factors influencing circulating thyroid hormones

Low adrenal gland hormone activity can occur simultaneously with hypothyroidism. On the other hand, when thyroid hormones are low by themselves, the adrenal glands often compensate by producing more cortisol to offset some of the symptoms of hypothyroidism.

An enzyme located in the liver, kidneys, pituitary gland, hypothalamus and brown fat is necessary for conversion of T4 to T3, the more active thyroid hormone. Anything that interferes with this conversion leads to hypothyroidism. Over the years medical research has identified many factors that interfere with this process. For instance, there are trace elements necessary for this enzymatic reaction, like selenium and zinc; if they are low in the diet, low T3 will be the result. But other nutrients, if missing, will also interfere with T4 to T3 conversion: iodine, iron as well as vitamins A, B2, B6 and B12.

Several medications can also interfere with the conversion of T4 to T3: we already mentioned birth control pills; others are estrogen, lithium (patients with bipolar disorder are often on this), phenytoin, theophylline, beta blockers (such as propranolol), chemotherapy and clomipramine.

But dietary factors can also lower T3 due to a lack of conversion from T4:too many cruciferous vegetables, a low carbohydrate diet, low fat diet, low protein diet, excessive alcohol use, walnuts and soy. In a study where the effects of soy were examined 37 adults on a high soy diet over three months 50% developed hypothyroidism. When the soy diet was stopped it took one month to normalize the thyroid function (Ref. 2).

There is no end of factors that cause low T3 because of the inability to convert from T4: chronic inflammation due to cytokines, diabetes, aging, poisoning with heavy metals like mercury, lead and cadmium (cigarette smoking), fluoride, pesticides, exposure to radiation and stress. Other toxic substances that enter the body can interfere with the same T4 to T3 conversion process: dioxins, phthalates (chemicals added to plastics) and PCB. But excess calcium and copper (copper salts could come from spraying of organic fruit) can also lead to low T3.

Other hormones can disbalance the equilibrium and cause low T3 because of a lack of conversion from T4: too much stress, which causes cortisol from the adrenal glands to rise. Surgeries associated with the same stress response (high cortisol levels) also have been shown to cause low T3.

There is another conversion process that has been shown to lead to lowered T3: it is called “reverse T3 (rT3)”. rT3 is an inactive form of T3, which blocks thyroid receptors and renders T3 less active. rT3 is particularly important in stressful situations and in athletes who engage in extreme exercise. In these individuals T3 and T4 blood tests are normal, TSH is suppressed and rT3 is elevated. That’s how the doctor can diagnose this condition. Other conditions that lead to high reverse T3 are: aging, diabetes, exposure to free radicals (chemotherapy or radiation in cancer treatment), fasting, prolonged illness, toxic metal exposure, inflammatory cytokines, depression and anxiety, bipolar disorder, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia.

After all this negative news it is almost a wonder that the thyroid is still doing its work! Since we know the risk factors, it is important to be aware that certain supplements and dietary habits can help to increase the conversion from T4 to T3. Here is a list of those that help: iodine, iron, zinc, selenium, potassium, Ashwaganda, and a high protein diet. Other positive factors are vitamins A, B2 and E; growth hormone, testosterone, insulin, glucagon, melatonin and estrogen (high dose).

Symptoms of hypothyroidism

There was an overwhelming amount of information about signs and symptoms of hypothyroidism that was reviewed. I can only highlight some of the more common symptoms here. It is important to know that some of these signs and symptoms occur several years before the lab values become abnormal; this is particularly true of the “eye brow sign” and the thinning of eyebrows is a pointer to hypothyroidism!

Depression, weight gain, constipation and migraine type headaches can be early non-specific signs of hypothyroidism. Women often present with irregular periods. Other symptoms are: decreased memory and inability to concentrate, anxiety/panic attacks, muscle and joint pains, a puffy face, swollen eyelids, decreased sexual interest, and sleep disturbance. Sparse, coarse, dry hair; missing hair confined to the outside 1/3 of both eye brows (eye brow sign) and carpal tunnel syndrome are also associated with a lack of thyroid function. Often there is also a loss of eyelashes or eyelashes that are not as thick. When blood tests show high cholesterol, iron deficiency anemia or vitamin B12 deficiency this should prompt the physician to order thyroid tests.

Blood tests for hypothyroidism

TSH, free T3, free T4, reverse T3 and thyroid antibodies need to all be ordered to have a complete documentation of what is going on. Among the thyroid antibodies these three types need to be ordered: antithyroglobulin antibody, antimicrosomal antibody and antithyroperoxidase (anti-TPO) antibody. There are a number of more studies that an endocrinologist would order in difficult to diagnose cases. Thyroid antibodies are an important cause of hypothyroidism in the US and can be due to Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, an inflammatory condition of the thyroid gland. Some people have autoimmune antibodies against adrenal gland tissue. There are also patients who have gluten sensitivity, and they may produce these autoantibodies to both the adrenal glands as well as the thyroid gland.

Detoxification can include intravenous chelation therapy, if heavy metals are involved. In some cases detoxification is all that is needed.

Proper nutrition with a Mediterranean diet and some iodine supplements or seaweed is important. But often the thyroid is damaged by the time hypothyroidism is diagnosed and thyroid hormones have to be replaced.

Replacement of thyroid hormones is best done by desiccated thyroid or compounded thyroid (both T3 and T4). The normalization of the TSH level is taken as the end point and should be below 2.0 (not the lab normal value of below 5); free T3 should be optimally between 3.5 and 4.3 and reverse T3 should be 50 to 150 pg/ml to be optimal.

If reverse T3 is high, the patient will have hypothyroid symptoms, even if T3 and T4 blood tests are normal. Because reverse T3 is derived from T4, the physician will have to lower T4 or take the patient off T4. Replacement with T3 will lead to lower TSH production by the pituitary gland and production of T4 and inappropriate conversion to reverse T3 will decrease.

Depending on what other conditions the patient presents with, it likely will help to eliminate stress, treat selenium and iodine deficiency, treat infections and treat growth hormone deficiency, if present.

There were many more pearls of wisdom in this very comprehensive talk on hypothyroidism, but there is not enough room in this blog to mention all of this. For more info read Dr. Pamela Smith’s book (Ref.3).

Low Thyroid (Hypothyroidism)

Conclusion

The thyroid is one of the main players involved in the maintenance of our health and well being. Hypothyroidism can develop for multiple reasons: inadequate iodine intake, toxins including heavy metals, autoantibodies from gluten or other sensitivity and certain medication usage. It is a fallacy to think that supplements, vitamins and lifestyle choices can “cure” thyroid deficiency. Once the levels are low, thyroid replacement is the only way to reestablish a hormonal balance! The treating physician must consider many factors when replacing thyroid hormones optimally. Desiccated thyroid hormone replacement (containing T3 and T4) is the best type of replacement of missing thyroid hormones. The needs can differ a great deal, as no patient is the same! For best results the treating physician needs to individualize treatment.

The Cleveland Clinic in Ohio has decided to kick out McDonald’s from its hospital. The doctors decided that McDonald’s food was not in the best interest of their patients or their staff. This was a gutsy thing to do. But the Cleveland Hospital is already the 7th hospital in the US to do that. There are over 5,600 hospitals with cafeterias and fast food outlets as well as many other emergency care and healthcare facilities with their own food outlets. Even, if only a certain percentage of them are no longer visible in their facilities, this must be considered progress.

Why did the Cleveland Clinic decide to throw out McDonald’s?

This is a reasonable question. The answer is also very straightforward: it is because McDonald’s food quality was unacceptable from a food quality point of view. The doctors did not think it was compatible with good health.

McDonald’s serves genetically modified organisms (GMO) in their food. There is controversy regarding GMO and it may take a lot longer before we really know whether or not GMO is safe to eat.

There is dimethylpolysiloxane in fish fillet as an anti-foaming agent. Why in the world do we need an antifoaming agent in our food?

When you take all of these facts together, it is no wonder that the Cleveland Clinic Hospital doctors decided to show McDonald’s the door.

Contrast this with good quality food

It is tiring to roam around and find mediocre food in so many outlets. It pays to look over a healthy food list and perhaps start buying it and cooking your own food. The more people will do that, the less business should be left for the poor quality fast food places.

Unfortunately this does not happen easily. People want questionable “convenience”, they don’t want to plan their food needs ahead and bring a lunch along. They like to eat their lunch at a fast food take-out place. They also do not think about the lack of quality in food. As long as it tastes OK, they feel the quality should be OK. But this is exactly where cheap food merchants take advantage of us: they can make artificial foods that taste – let’s say- like ribs, but that in actuality do not contain ribs at all, just cheap leftover meats that you would normally not eat.

We need the “Un-Burger”

We have been overfed burgers. Burgers are made with wheat. Wheat is no longer what it was 70 to 100 years ago. Dr. William Davis, the author of the book “Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health” explained at the 2012 Anti-Aging Conference in Las Vegas that I attended how the BASF, a major chemical company from Germany was able to chemically modify the genes of wheat in the 1960’s and 1970’s. The farmers liked that the new wheat (called Clearfield wheat) grew with stronger roots, shorter final stems and much larger grains so the yield per acre was higher. This type of wheat was patented under the name of Clearfield wheat and sold all around the world. What was not publicized at the time was that the gliadin content increased manifold from the composition of wheat strains used for thousands of years before. Gliadin gets rid of the glue like substance between the gut cells and causes leaky gut syndrome, something that was mentioned at many other lectures throughout the conference. This leads to exposure of immune cells to foreign proteins from the gut, which causes the immune system to hyper react with autoimmune antibodies.

This is not what we want as burgers: but burgers are baked with the wheat that has been chemically force-hybridized into Clearfield wheat.

The alternative is the “Un-Burger”: a pure meat patty minus the bun, a chicken salad or a turkey salad. You take organic salad and top it with either organic chicken breast or organic turkey breast. In other words there is no messing around with artificial anything. Give consumers honest products that are edible and that taste good! Your salad dressing can for instance be balsamic vinegar with olive oil. This is straight forward, no nonsense; that’s what we need. Lemon juice and olive oil works as well, and so do dressings based on yoghurt, lemon and herbs.

Healthy food wherever we go

We need to learn from the Cleveland experience. You may want to go through your fridge and look what is inside. Are you aware whether there is MSG in your food?

Monosodium glutamate is not a harmless flavor enhancer. It belongs into the group of excitotoxins. The substance can destroy brain cells. It also has the potential to give you a nasty headache, especially if larger quantities are used. When we look for food, we do not want to get a headache or risk losing our memory. I threw out all MSG containing foods in 2001.

MSG comes under many disguised names: autolysed yeast, gelatin, monosodium glutamate, textured protein, yeast food, sodium caseinate and others. Read labels and exclude products with MSG in it. It is a good investment into your future without Alzheimer’s disease.

Next you want to make sure that sugar is excluded from your diet; with this I mean extra sugar as well as sugar from processed foods. If you read food labels you probably are aware of how much sugar manufacturers include in processed foods. It tastes pleasing, it is cheap and it makes people come back to buy more. But you as the consumer have a right to get rid of this as it causes your insulin level to increase and on the long term this paves the way to diseases such as diabetes, cardio-vascular diseases, Alzheimer’s disease or others. As a result I do not buy anything with added sugar.

If I like to sweeten my coffee or yogurt, I can do it by adding a tiny bit of stevia, a natural plant sweetener. No calories, not insulin response, no worry about diabetes or Alzheimer’s, and no tooth decay either.

The more you can cook at home, the easier it is to take your lunch salad along in a BPA free container. It is better for you, better for your health, and by actively avoiding junk outlets, restaurants will get the message and offer healthier food choices. It is a process of years to change consumer habits. You as well as your children are the beneficiaries.

Here is an example how to order food in a restaurant, if you want to make healthy choices:

Eating out at a restaurant

The first thing the waiter will do is asking you what drinks you want to order. My answer is sparkling (or non-sparkling) mineral water. This establishes that I do not want to order alcoholic drinks. They are empty calories; they are also overpriced. But if you really want to have a glass of red or white wine, pick a good one and only one glass. Studies have shown that the resveratrol in it will prevent heart attacks, but too much of it undermines your liver and the healthy condition of your pancreas.

Next the waiter will come with bread and butter. It is best to skip these offerings. As a matter of fact I usually tell the waiter when I order the mineral water that I do not want any bread. Waiters nowadays understand: non-carbs! (The truth is that you do indeed eat carbs. Vegetables and fruit are carbs!) It goes like a red line through the rest of the order. It starts when I order my meal: a bowl of salad as a starter is great, and next I order meat or fish with a side of vegetables. The waiter understands, and often restaurants will offer to substitute the pasta or potatoes with extra vegetables. After the meal the waiter will temptingly produce the dessert menu: any dessert today? The answer is a simple “no”. After a filling meal nobody needs a dessert that is off the calorie Richter scale!

Usually this is the blueprint for me at a restaurant. With this approach you will not gain weight, but you will leave satisfied. Unfortunately these days in most restaurants we do not have any choices yet with regard to organic food.

Fast Food Kicked Out Of Hospital

Conclusion

We wade through a world of poisoned foods. Vegetable and fruit crops are often sprayed with pesticides unless you buy organic; but even with organic foods there are certain, more benign chemicals they have to use to keep the pests away. We need to avoid (at least I choose to do so) GMO foods until we know in decades to come whether they are really safe. Stay away from the modern wheat, unless you welcome gliadin in your diet that will cause leaky gut syndrome or worse disease. One good start is to avoid fast food outlets, which I have done since 2001. I also buy mostly organic food and ask my wife to cook it for us. When we travel, we take as much organic food along as we possibly can. On the road we can look for organic restaurants. They are far and few in between, but many health food stores have salad bars and hot food counters that serve organic foods. If we have a hotel room with a fridge, we can buy organic produce, organic cold cuts, boiled eggs, or cooked seafood, and it is easy to throw together a great tasting, colorful salad.

Healthy food consumption has become a routine. But many have not even begun to stop eating at fast food outlets! Don’t wait for New Year’s resolutions. Make a change for healthier food now! You’ll reap the benefits for life.

Avocado is in the limelight, because it has been shown to be a super food with many positive effects on people’s health. It helps arthritis, is good for your vision, protects against cardiovascular disease, fights metabolic syndrome, helps in weight maintenance and even protects against some cancers. It contains healthy oils and many vitamins and minerals.

Avocado composition

80% of an avocado is fiber making it a valuable food to prevent colon cancer. Among the minerals it is noteworthy that avocados are rich in boron and potassium. In terms of vitamins it is rich in vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol), vitamin B6, folate, vitamin K and pantothenic acid. It does not contain cholesterol, but contains monounsaturated fat (oleic acid). Oleic acid is the compound in olive oil responsible for lowering your blood pressure. The oils in avocado contain 71% monounsaturated fatty acids, 13% polyunsaturated fatty acids and 16% saturated fatty acids. This mix promotes healthy blood lipids, but also helps in the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins and phytochemicals. In addition to all that avocados contain phytosterols, a number of carotenoids, non-carotenoid antioxidants, alphalinolenic acid (an omega-3 fatty acid) and glutathione.

Cardiovascular disease protection

The combination of fiber and folate in avocado help to reduce LDL cholesterol, which when oxidized can lead to hardening of arteries. The folate reduces homocysteine, which is a risk factor for heart disease. Phytosterols that are similar in structure to cholesterol compete with cholesterol absorption in the gut.

In a 2015 study several diets were compared with regard to LDL lowering potential, either a low fat diet, or two forms of medium fat diets, where one contained one avocado per day. The results were surprising: the low fat diet reduced LDL by 7.4 mg/dL while the avocado diet reduced LDL by 13.5 mg/dL.

The oils in avocados also seem to suppress the appetite center in the brain helping people to eat less and controlling obesity and diabetes.

Arthritis prevention

In a 2014 study hip osteoarthritis was examined for 3 years. An extract from avocados and soybeans was used and found to be protective of osteoarthritis. The anti-inflammatory components of avocado like omega-3 fatty acids, carotenoids, phytosterols and non-carotenoid antioxidants all work together in countering joint inflammation. Boron abundantly contained in avocado also was found to be essential for healthy joints.

Eye protection

Avocado has its own mixture of carotenoids, like alpha- and beta-carotene, lutein, zeaxanthin, neochrome, chrysanthemaxanthin and others. These are contained in the green pulp. They have anti-inflammatory properties. The fatty acid profile of avocados helps to absorb carotenoids, as they are fat-soluble. A two phase clinical study was done that showed that avocado added to salsa or to salad was leading to 5- to 15-fold increased absorption of the carotenoids in salsa and salad when compared to avocado-free salsa and salad.

This is an important observation that we should remember: always eat some avocado with any fruit or vegetable that contains carotenoids, as this will improve the absorption of the carotenoids tremendously.

Why is that so important for eye disease? In a 2008 study a total of 1802 women aged 50 to 79 years from Iowa, Wisconsin, and Oregon were followed who had intakes of lutein and zeaxanthin above the 78th percentile. They were compared to women below the 28th percentiles in the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study with eye examinations in both groups. The eye specialists examined their eye lenses for nuclear cataracts. The surprising findings was that women with the highest quintile category of diet or serum levels of lutein and zeaxanthin had 32% less nuclear cataracts than women in the lowest quintile of lutein and zeaxanthin.

This shows that carotenoids of avocados have vision protective effects.

Metabolic syndrome and obesity

This 2013 study included 17,567 US adults and part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2001-2008. Comparisons were made between avocado eaters and non-avocado consumers. Interestingly, avocado eaters had a much better overall food quality in their diet: more vegetables, fruit, fiber and less added sugar. Calorie and sodium intake were identical in the two groups. But body weight, body mass index and waist circumference were significantly lower in avocado eaters than in the non-avocado control group. The cardio protective HDL cholesterol was significantly higher in the avocado group. The odds ratio for developing metabolic syndrome, the change in metabolism due to obesity was 50% lower in avocado consumers than in non-consumers. All of this is good news for the consumer, if we eat some avocado.

Skin, beauty and anti-aging

We don’t like to develop too many wrinkles, as they are associated with aging. The oils of avocados have been used for some time in skin care products as they stimulate collagen production in the skin and reduce wrinkles. But when you eat avocados, the carotenoid substances (such as lutein and zeaxanthin) serve for skin protection, protecting you from UV light damage. In addition, vitamin E and glutathione, which are also contained in avocado help to scavenge free radicals; they would otherwise prematurely age and wrinkle the skin. The end result is that the development of wrinkles will be reduced, when you consume avocados. The beneficial effects on your blood vessels in combination with protecting your skin will age your body slower, a point that has been noted in the anti-aging literature.

Cancer blocking properties

In the following I will briefly review the findings of several cancer research groups, but this review is by no means complete.

a) Leukemia:

This 2015 study describes a new chemotherapeutic agent, derived from avocado that they named Avocatin B. Avocatin B is active against the difficult to treat acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). It works by targeting mitochondrial components of AML, but does not affect healthy leukocytes or leukocyte progenitor stem cells.

b)Colon and esophageal cancer:

The authors of this study from Iran describe four phytoextracts of avocado for treatment of patients with esophageal cancer and colon cancer. They noted that the phytoextracts have a much lower toxicity than standard chemotherapeutic agents and significantly slow growth of these cancers. They plan to use these phytoextracts as complementary treatments of esophageal and colon cancers.

c)Oral cancers: this paper describes that avocado extracts were shown to be successful in treating oral cancers.

d)Cancer prevention: In this paper it is discussed that the phytochemicals in avocados arrest cancer cells in their cell division cycle and lead to apoptosis, which is natural cell death. The authors believe that eating avocado regularly can help prevent a whole array of different cancers by this mechanism.

Eat Your Avocado

Conclusion

Avocados are a super food, which has many beneficial effects. Perhaps one of the outstanding effects is prevention of obesity and the metabolic syndrome as discussed. Women may want to eat it because of the beneficial effects on skin and beauty. We all should be interested in wanting to prevent heart attacks, strokes and cancer.

But who does not want to prevent cataract surgery and keep good vision until a ripe old age? It is possible by eating avocados. And would you not want to prevent osteoarthritis? Eat avocados and add some omega-3 fatty acid from distilled fish oil as well to get the full anti-inflammatory effect. Your joints will thank you and let you swiftly move wherever you want to go.

I thought you should know about the health benefits of eating avocados. They make a nice addition to your food, not only as guacamole, but in a wide variety of dishes: use a few slices on your salad, make a tasty dip, and get inspired by recipes that you can easily find on line.

Of all the factors that definitely shorten life, obesity stands out like a giant. Let’s review a couple of facts regarding obesity:

Americans who were born between 1966 and 1985 became obese at a much earlier age than their parents

Obesity occurs at a younger age than in the past. 20% of people born between 1966 and 1985 were obese in their 20s.

The longer you are obese, the higher the chance of getting seriously sick or dying prematurely from complications of associated diseases like diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, kidney disease, liver disease and cancer.

Severely obese people live up to 20 years less than non-overweight people.

Obesity causes about 300,000 deaths in the U.S. annually

Change of metabolism

Obesity leads to a change in metabolism, which is known as metabolic syndrome. The liver changes its metabolism slightly producing more triglycerides, LDL cholesterol and clotting factors, which increases the risk for heart attacks, strokes and pulmonary emboli. The pancreas produces more insulin, which gives rise to reactive hypoglycemia. This means that 2-3 hours after a meal you become hungry as your blood sugar declines from the extra insulin. You are craving a sugary drink, a donut or other starchy food (pizza, fries, bread etc.). Unfortunately these types of foods reinforce the metabolic syndrome: the liver changes the sugar into LDL cholesterol and triglycerides. Excess sugar will oxidize the LDL cholesterol, which causes atheromas (hardening of the arteries). Protein is being caramelized, which is called “advanced glycation end-products” or AGEs. This reference clearly explains how to counter this: increase your consumption of fish, legumes, vegetables, fruits, low-fat milk products and whole grains; also reduce your intake of solid fats, full-fat dairy products, fatty meats, and highly processed foods. There are other hormone changes that take place in obese people.

Death statistics due to obesity

In this study 849 autopsies were performed over 10 years, of which 32.3% were of obese persons. Leading causes of deaths in obese people were: malignancy (31.4%), infection (25.9%), ischemic heart disease (12.8%), pulmonary embolism (6.2%) and liver disease (2.9%). Table 2 of this link shows the causes of death in non-obese individuals as well: malignancy (32.5%), infection (23.8%), ischemic heart disease (10.4%), pulmonary embolism (2.9%) and liver disease (0.7%). The figures do not look all that different except that liver disease and pulmonary embolism are significantly more often the cause of death in obese patients than in normal weight patients. What you do not see in these figures is that obese people get these conditions at a much younger age as a result of complications from the associated diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, osteoarthritis, kidney disease and liver disease.

Diabetes

The metabolic changes with regard to the metabolic syndrome include insulin resistance.

As obesity worsens the balance is lost where the body can compensate and type 2 diabetes develops with increased blood sugar values and symptoms of diabetes. Surprisingly with regular exercise and changes in food intake (adopting a low glycemic index diet) this can be treated successfully. Usually this change is also associated with some weight loss, which helps to stabilize the metabolism. If nothing is done to to change diabetes, there is a high risk for heart attacks, strokes and subsequent secondary conditions like diabetic nephropathy, retinopathy, diabetic neuropathy and vascular complications.

Uncontrolled high blood pressure

High blood pressure is part of the metabolic syndrome. Unfortunately in obesity it is often difficult to control and may require several different antihypertensive medications in combination to control it. One way to quickly get the blood pressure under control is to make a concentrated effort to reduce a few pounds of weight; this can be achieved by cutting out refined carbs and sugar and starting an exercise program of walking and swimming.

Smoking

Smoking continues to remain a problem. Men as a group are now smoking less while women are increasing their smoking rates. Smoking causes various cancers, but also increases death rates from heart disease and strokes. In connection with obesity it is clear that the obese smoker has the highest risk of dying prematurely. This is depicted in this link based on the original Framingham study.

80% of hip replacements and 90% of knee replacements are due to osteoarthritis. Obesity is the strongest modifiable risk factor that leads to osteoarthritis and subsequent surgery. There is a lot of morbidity and mortality associated with total knee and total hip surgeries. Part of this is the susceptibility to clot formation from the changes in metabolism associated with the metabolic syndrome. This often leads to pulmonary emboli and higher death rates following surgery when compared to surgery in people with normal weight.

Heart attacks and strokes

As there is an increase of the amount of heart attacks and strokes in overweight and obese people it is important to reduce your BMI when you realize that it is creeping up. Regular exercise along with a Mediterranean diet helps to improve this. Avoid processed foods that often have hidden sugar and refined carbs in them. Also cut out sugar. Use stevia, a natural sweetener, if you want to sweeten your food or drinks.

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)

In the past nonalcoholic fatty liver disease was rare. Now with the increase of obesity it is common. It can lead to liver cirrhosis with hepatic failure, a common cause of death. But after several years of liver cirrhosis, liver cancer may develop within the cirrhotic liver. Physicians saw this condition only rarely in decades past.

Kidney disease

With obesity there is a negative effect on the kidneys from the metabolic syndrome. Hyperinsulinism affects the capillaries of the filtration units, called glomeruli. They start to proliferate and undergo a form of degenerative change, called glomerulosclerosis. This decreases the filtration capacity of the glomeruli and the kidneys as a whole. After a few decades of this process kidney failure can set in. When an obese person develops diabetes, this will also have a negative effect on kidney function and accelerate the deterioration of kidney function. The end result is kidney failure, which requires dialysis or a kidney transplant.

Cancer and obesity

Chronic inflammation that is worsened by the metabolic syndrome leads to higher rates of various cancers. A prospective study of more than 900,000 US adults was conducted for 16 years. In 1982 when the study was started none of the participants had cancer. After 16 years 57,145 of the study participants had died of cancer. Those in this study who had a BMI of 40.0 or more had cancer death rates that were 52% higher for males and 62% higher for females when compared to normal weight men and women. It was noticeable that the digestive tract showed higher cancer rates in the obese: esophagus, liver, gallbladder, pancreas, colon and rectum; other more frequent cancers were kidney cancer, multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. There were also trends of higher cancer death rates with regard to cancer of the stomach and prostate in men and breast cancer, uterine cancer, ovarian and cervical cancer in women. The authors concluded that due to the rising obesity rates in the US population cancer rates in men will soon reach the 14% level and in women the 20% level out of the total death rates.

Treating obesity

Treatment of obesity requires a multifaceted approach. I have discussed this in detail in this blog. Briefly, the diet of the obese person needs to be closely looked at. Sugar and starchy foods need to be eliminated. Low glycemic foods like vegetables, lean meat and salads should be encouraged. A regular exercise program needs to be instituted, starting with swimming and walking. Later a gradual transition into gym type activities could be contemplated.

Weight loss surgery has been successfully applied in some obese patients with a BMI that is greater than 30.0 up to a BMI of 39.9. In a 5-year follow up after LAP-band surgery no surgical complications were reported and the mean percentage weight loss was 15.9±12.4%.

Obesity Shortens Life

Conclusion

Obesity is a condition that has been gradually developing since the 1980’s. When you look at the food intake changes rationally it is not surprising that this is happening. Sugar consumption, high-fructose corn syrup consumption and the consumption of processed food have to be cut down, if not cut out completely. You can forget shopping at the middle section of any grocery store, where all that processed food is located. Go to the vegetable section and buy a lot of food from there. Low fat dairy products, eggs, and low fat meats as well as salmon and other seafood are foods that are healthy. There is one problem though and that is the feeding of antibiotics to chickens, turkeys and beef cattle. This leads to superbugs and changes your gut flora. I suggest you buy organic meats. I eat organic food and have cut out wheat also as wheat underwent forced hybridization in the 1970’s. All of the wheat in the world now is this type of wheat that is too rich in gliadin, which causes leaky gut syndrome and autoimmune diseases. For this reason I avoid all wheat.

I see no reason why obese people could not gradually shed their pounds and regain their stable metabolism. Those with diabetes will be able to shed that diagnosis as they shed their pounds. The kidney and liver function will also stabilize when you shed enough pounds. The goal should first be to reach a BMI of 25.0 to 30.0, which is the overweight category. The next goal would be to aim for shedding even more pounds until you reach a BMI of fewer than 25.0. If you say this is too tough to do, I am saying: giving up is not an option. Cherish your health!

We are all aging, and as we do we are gradually losing energy until we reach our last breath. Here I like to review where our energy comes from and what we can do to preserve our energy. When we preserve our energy we are in fact also slowing down the aging process and this in essence is the approach to anti-aging.

Mitochondria are power packs of energy

Each of our body cells has many mitochondria to give us energy. Some organs are more demanding. They are the main players in our body like the brain, the heart, the liver or the kidneys. Their cells have thousands of these energy packages. Without the mitochondria there would be no energy available to these key organs to perform all the work they do. They allow us to think and produce brain hormones, to contract our heart muscle and pump the blood through our arteries. They are organs like the liver that are in charge of all of the major metabolic reactions or the kidneys that filter our blood for impurities and eliminate them in urine. Mitochondria can be likened to our power bundles that give our organs and us energy to get through life.

Get enough sleep

Sleep is an energy rebuilder. But it has to be deep enough and long enough, and there has to be enough REM sleep to give us the feeling that we had a refreshing sleep. As we age some of our hormone production slows down. One of those substances is melatonin. It is crucial for good and restful sleep. If our body is not producing enough, we can supplement with small dosages like 3 mg orally to help our body to initiate sleep. It is not an addictive substance. It is the body’s own hormone. Should you wake up later in the night, you could take another 3 mg of melatonin. There is no risk either to feel tired or “hung over” after taking melatonin.

Exercise regularly

The cheapest energy you can get is by exercising regularly. When you exercise on a treadmill, go jogging or go for a brisk walk you condition your heart, improve your lungs; in short you develop cardiovascular fitness. At the same time your muscles are strengthened with isometric exercises. You are optimizing your energy flow. In the process of exercising you create a stimulus for your mitochondria to multiply in the affected tissues. This applies as much to your muscles as it does to your heart and to your lungs. You will find that your muscle strength increases. With exercise you spend energy, but you feel more energetic from it because your body is being tuned up.

Manage stress

Self-hypnosis is a simple way to allow your whole body to relax. However, the various forms of yoga will do the same thing for you. Meditation is another way of finding peace and tranquility. All of these methods will re-energize you. They calm your brain, help you to cope with stress and rebalance your hormones at the same time.

Lifestyle

You need a lifestyle that is conducive to keeping your energies. Listed here are several factors that interfere with energy production.

Smoking: If you smoke, you burn up energy with every cigarette you consume. You interfere with the oxygen transport through your lungs, but the chemicals that poison your system also poison the mitochondria of the cells. By smoking you are destroying your power packs. Pollution damages your lungs in a similar fashion as smoking does, but it is a slower process. There are a number of big cities with severe air pollution and they may not be worthwhile visiting.

Sugar and starchy foods: Back in the 1970’s based on the Framingham Heart Study it was thought that hardening of arteries would be due to an accumulation of cholesterol from fat in the diet. Saturated fatty acids were accused to be the culprit. A low fat diet was supposed to be the solution. But the end result was the obesity and diabetes wave that we still see now. There had to be another explanation of where hardening of the arteries came from. Banning fats did not lead to better statistics. The new observation was that a low carb/medium fat diet was associated with low heart attack rates, low stroke rates, and even low cancer rates. Researchers also found the real culprit: They are sugar, starchy foods and processed foods. Sugar and starchy foods are metabolized in the liver into LDL cholesterol, triglycerides and they also oxidize LDL cholesterol. This starts a vicious process of inflammation of the lining of the arteries with fat deposits into the wall of the arteries. By eating the wrong foods we interfere with our body chemistry to the point where free radicals are produced that attack everything in us including our mitochondria. I have blogged about this many times before. You can read about it here.

Alcohol: the famous one glass of red wine for women and two glasses of red wine for men is supposedly keeping us younger for longer. This is true for the resveratrol in the red wine, which is a powerful antioxidant. But to say that alcohol itself would prolong your life is a white lie. Alcohol is a nerve and cell poison; it robs you of energy. I take the resveratrol as a supplement from the health food store to protect my system. I stay away from alcohol.

Keep the arteries open

We need healthy arteries to pump blood through all of the branches and deliver oxygen and nutrients to the body cells. Unfortunately, as we age our arteries tend to get deposits that make them more narrow, and this could also raise our blood pressure. The end result is that less nutrients and oxygen will reach our body cells. We perceive that something is wrong by not feeling as energetic as usual. Simple lifestyle changes as mentioned below can improve our circulation and lower our blood pressure. Chelation therapy has also been shown as helpful in the TACT study.

Get rid of inflammation

Dr. Paul Ridker found that approximately 50% of patients with heart attacks had a normal cholesterol level. He was looking for a more meaningful screening test and found it in the C-reactive protein. If the test result was higher than 3 there was a high probability that there was inflammation somewhere in the body, but a test result of less than 1 was normal. In the meantime scientists have learnt that the C-reactive protein is a very sensitive tool to measure inflammation in the body, but it is not specific for heart attacks. It is also positive in people with arthritis, cancer, and autoimmune diseases. Chronic inflammation is also destroying immune cells: this explains the development of cancer as the end stage of chronic inflammation.

Chronic inflammation robs you of energy. We can do a lot with natural anti-inflammatory supplements to quench inflammation.

Preserve your immune system

We can strengthen our immune system by exercise, taking vitamin C regularly and by taking vitamin D3 supplements to just name a few. DHEA, the precursor hormone from the adrenal gland also helps stimulate the immune system.

Balance your hormones

As we age we loose hormones one by one. With melatonin this starts happening after the age of 20, with DHEA and growth hormone after you are in your mid thirties. Women start to get into menopause at the age of 45 to 55, but this can occur earlier or later. Men are going through their hormone change (andropause) at the age of 55 to 60. Both, women and men know when they are entering their hormone change because of a lack of energy and a few other unpleasant symptoms. Women get hot flashes. Men get grumpy, have erectile dysfunction, a lack of sex drive, week muscles and slower thinking. If you feel those symptoms, seek the help of a naturopath who is knowledgeable on bioidentical hormone replacement. Chances are that your regular doctor will want to prescribe synthetic hormones unless you can find an anti-aging physician. If your blood tests show deficiencies in the sex hormones, you will need to get a bioidentical hormone prescription. They are usually dispensed as creams, which you apply to your chest wall or non-hairy forearms in the morning. After 4 weeks your energy will be back, and your body will function normally again. All the body functions that you thought were gone forever just needed that extra stimulus from the missing bioidentical hormones.

Organic, GMO free food

I was tempted to just write “good food”. But this may be confusing to people. It is difficult anywhere in the world to get good food. Often insecticides and pesticides contaminate fruit and vegetables, which function as xenoestrogens blocking hormonal receptors. These residues are toxic for your body, and they are destructive to your energy. Organic food with the USDA certification or any independent certification is the best way to ensure that you get a good food product. I take this seriously and pay the extra dollar. We do not need plates heaped with foods. Small helpings of good quality foods are more important for our well-being.

Treat depression and mental disease

People who are depressed will complain of a lack of energy. Their brain circuits are constantly in overdrive being busy with negative thinking. Cognitive therapy can help depressed patients to face their negative emotions. It is a learning process of thinking step by step to distinguish what is real and what is magic thinking. It is important to seek qualified help. Depressed patients distort the way they think, but cognitive therapy sets their thinking straight (Ref.1). When the thinking is normalizing, the drained energy returns, people sleep better again and they can use the energy to move forward.

Positive thinking

Negative thoughts are draining you of energy. You want to stay optimistic within what’s reasonable. Be thankful for all the good things in your life. Minimize what’s negative, but think about positive solutions to get rid of energy draining parts in your days. Do this persistently until it becomes part of your life and you will have extra energy that you didn’t waste in negative thinking or by getting caught up in needless anxiety. Worrying does not get us anywhere, but it depletes our energy.

Preserving Our Energy

What can we do to prevent aging?

It follows from all that I said that anything that preserves energy would also prevent premature aging.

As mentioned, it is important to exercise regularly (gym, swimming, dancing, fast walking, jogging etc.). Have good, balanced nutrition, preferably organic food. Some supplements are also helpful: resveratrol, Co-Q-10; pages 100 to 103 of my book contain more vitamins and supplements (Ref.2). Here is a link to my website NetHealthBook, which also addresses vitamins and supplements (scroll down to table). Avoid sugar and starchy foods to avoid oxidizing LDL cholesterol. Use bioidentical hormones to replace what is missing. Get your 7 to 8 hours of sleep and don’t forget relaxation. Detoxify to get rid of toxins that would slow you down. Infrared saunas are one way to detoxify. It is helpful to consider chelation treatments. Last but not least have a positive outlook on life.

Conclusion

Our energy that we feel tells us whether we are staying healthy or whether we are at the verge of getting sick. It is best to maintain your energy at all times by doing a combination of things outlined above. You will retain youthful energy; you prevent cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s and even cancer. Most of all you have the energy to do the things you want and love to do.

I prefer to work on staying well and in the process I have the energy to do the things I want to do. Part of it is blogging, part of it is writing books, and part of it is dancing. The key is that I like what I am doing. I invite you to do what will keep you energized. Listen to your body.

The British Medical Journal (BMJ Publishing Group, James J DiNicolantonio) published a critical editorial review regarding the lack of science behind the low fat diet guidelines. The low fat guidelines were enacted in 1977 in the US and in 1983 in England. The devastating fact was that it was based only on a study of 2467 men (not a single female included) and there was no evidence of lower heart attacks in the low fat diet group when compared to the normal diet control. Yet the guidelines were the cause of the obesity and diabetes epidemic that followed causing heart attacks and strokes. February, the month where we think about heart disease is the appropriate month to discuss the findings of this British Medical Journal article that exposes it all.

The BMJ Publishing Group re-traced all of the data that were available at the time of the decision in 1977. There were six randomized clinical trials with a mean duration of 5.4±3.5 years where low fat diet was compared to normal diet. The researchers found that the authorities who wrote the dietary recommendations for a low fat diet should have come to the conclusion that there was no statistical difference between the experimental group and the control group. The summary of the present re-analysis of the studies that were available to the US government in 1977 and to the UK government in 1983 was as follows: “There was no statistically significant relationship between dietary interventions and all-cause mortality.”

It was noted that the all cause mortality was identical in the experimental group and the control group (370 deaths in both groups). No significant difference of coronary heart disease (CHD) was observed between the low fat diet group and the control group.

There was no statistically significant difference in deaths from CHD (heart attacks). The reductions in mean serum cholesterol levels were significantly higher in the intervention groups; however, this did not result in measurable differences in mortality from CHD or all-cause mortality.

What is further troubling is that the six randomized studies that were the basis of all of these observations included only 2467 men, but not a single woman. Yet the diet recommendations were made for both men and women alike.

The authors concluded “It seems incomprehensible that dietary advice was introduced for 220 million Americans and 56 million UK citizens given the contrary results from a small number of unhealthy men”.

Dr. Robert Olson of St Louis University warned Senator George McGovern that the studies did not support the dietary recommendations the Senator was about to announce. To this objection Senator McGovern replied: “Senators don’t have the luxury that the research scientist does of waiting until every last shred of evidence is in”.

Based on this link the following observations regarding low fat diets were made:

In processed foods low fat diet meant that more sugar was added to bring the saturated fat content down. This has detrimental effects on insulin sensitivity and causes type 2 diabetes on the long-term. Small LDL particles are increased and so are triglycerides, while HDL is reduced. Blood clot markers increase, weight increases causing obesity. Saturated fats were replaced with polyunsaturated fats of the omega-6 type (including oils from corn, soybean, safflower and cottonseed).

However, randomized controlled trials showed that when trans-fats and saturated fats were replaced with omega-6 polyunsaturated fats (without simultaneously increasing omega-3 fatty acids) increased death rates from heart attacks and strokes were found.

The Anti-Coronary Club trial showed that more people died from heart attacks when saturated fat was replaced by polyunsaturated fat.

The reason for the heart attack causing omega-6-fatty acids (from polyunsaturated fats) has been worked out in several research papers between 2006 and 2012 (cited in this link): they cause inflammation, cause cancer, weaken the immune system, lower the protective HDL cholesterol and increase the susceptibility of LDL cholesterol to be oxidized.

When saturated fat was replaced by polyunsaturated fatty acids (omega-6) there was more breast cancer and prostate cancer.

This review ended with the statement that there is a lack of data supporting that a low fat diet helps prevent heart attacks and strokes. We have now clinical trials that numbered 347 747 participants. These trials showed that increased fat intake did not cause heart attacks. The women’s health Initiative included 48, 835 postmenopausal women showing that a low fat diet did not reduce cancer, and it also did not prevent heart attacks or strokes. All of this supports what has been summarized before in a critical review regarding “The Oiling of America“.

Low Fat Diet Not Protective Of Heart Attacks

Conclusion

Enjoy saturated fat as it does not cause you harm. Cut out omega-6 fatty acids like oils from corn, soybean, safflower and cottonseed. Use virgin olive oil or coconut oil instead. Take regular supplements of omega-3 fatty acid (marine derived) to balance natural omega-6 fatty acids in turkey or chicken meat. You can eat cheese (in the US buy organic or imported cheeses from Europe where bovine growth hormone is illegal) and enjoy nuts.

It is most important to avoid sugar, honey and high fructose corn syrup as these all oxidize LDL cholesterol, which is the pre-stage for hardening of the arteries. The oxidized LDL cholesterol is incorporated into the plaques of arteries and leads to strokes and heart attacks. This also means that you must avoid all processed foods that contain sugar and high fructose corn syrup (read labels).

It is not that difficult to follow such diet recommendations as my wife and I have done this since 2001. We use stevia to replace sugar for sweetening (no calories, no effect on insulin). Do what’s good for your body!

Dr. Ray Schilling

Dr. Ray Schilling born in Tübingen, Germany and Graduated from Eberhard-Karls-University Medical School, Tuebingen in 1971. Once Post-doctoral cancer research position holder at the Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto, is now a member of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M). [About Dr. Ray Schilling …]